Universum launches the findings from the India portion of its annual global talent survey. This year, over 28,000 students from India’s leading universities participated and completed more than 115,000 assessments of India’s top graduate employers. Set out to track the career aspirations and preferences of India’s future talent pool, the Top 100 Ideal Employers student survey also recognizes the most coveted employees based solely on the responses collected.

Firm favorite Google retains the top spot as the most ideal employer among India’s future workforce. This was the case for students studying in all of the main fields: business and commerce, engineering and IT, natural sciences, humanities and liberal arts, and education and law students.

Graduates’ Most Preferred Industries

This year’s survey showed that 57% of business students regard accounting and auditing to be their most preferred industry. 31% of natural sciences students chose education as their most preferred destination for employment.

However, the report also shows a decrease in interest in the automotive industry amongst engineering and IT students. The sector’s decline in popularity can be partly due to the change in demand for automotive products and the continued effect of environment and safety mandates that were announced in 2018 and 2019.

Pay equality remains a big issue

The survey asks participant to state what annual salary they expect upon graduation and, sadly, India has some of the largest disparities in pay expectation globally.

This is worst amongst natural sciences students, where males expect around 23% more in compensation than their female counterparts. Among business talent the gap is still large, at 21%, reducing slightly to 15% for IT talent. This disparity in expectations does not bode well for pay equality between the genders and suggests that without intervention from the government, or employers themselves, a breakthrough could be a long way off.

Most used digital channels by India’s future talent

The survey also looks at how employers can best communicate with and influence the talent they want to attract. What is clear is that in India, if employers want to influence and attract top talent, and complete with the best-ofbreed employers, they will need a strong social media outreach strategy. Abstaining from social media will greatly limit their ability to attract top talent and will leave the field open to those willing to invest in this channel.

In terms of themes and messaging that works best, students in India seek out content from employers that focus on training & development, and the advancement opportunities they can expect if they join an organization. They also look for information on the business performance of the company to help inform their choices.

Pratik Sabherwal, Regional Head of advisory for Universum APAC said, “As India grows in digitalization, graduates’ use of social media to learn about potential employers also continues to increase. Interestingly, graduates from different backgrounds have preferences for different social media channels, indicating companies need to be actively present on the relevant social media channels where their target audiences spend time. The on-going restrictions on the campus activities due to the Covid-19 situation has pushed many employers to embrace virtual campus activities, gamification and other alternative tools for employer branding and recruitment, a trend that is likely to continue in the new normal.”

The Top 10 IDEAL Employers among Business/Commerce and Engineering/ IT students are as follows: